RIVERSIDE COUNTY: More money found for DA, animal services

CASH INFUSION

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, July 7, will consider $51 million worth of additional spending in the fiscal 2015-16 budget.

District attorney: An additional $8 million is ticketed. District Attorney Mike Hestrin has said layoffs are an option unless his office gets more money.

Animal services: Director Robert Miller also asked for more funding to avoid the prospect of pink slips. The county executive office proposes giving his department an additional $3.6 million.

Riverside County has found more money for the District Attorney’s Office and Animal Services Department after leaders of those agencies warned of possible layoffs unless their budgets were increased.

But some frugality still will be necessary.

County Executive Officer Jay Orr recommends giving the District Attorney’s Office and Animal Services Department an additional $8 million and $3.6 million, respectively. As in prior years, the county has cobbled money together from onetime sources, including $40.8 million from Sacramento for previously provided services.

District Attorney Mike Hestrin and Department of Animal Services Director Robert Miller told supervisors last month that their departments already are facing shortfalls. Layoffs – up to 144 for the District Attorney’s Office and 51 for the Animal Services Department – might be needed unless those gaps are closed, Hestrin and Miller warned.

In all, Orr proposes spending $51 million of an anticipated $66.5 million in additional revenue on various departments. The remaining $15.5 million would be held in reserve.

To save dollars in a tight budget year, Orr is asking Hestrin and Sheriff Stan Sniff to hold the line on new hires. Orr also recommends opening the expanded Indio jail in phases.

On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors will consider Orr’s proposed changes to the budget for the fiscal year that started July 1. Last month, supervisors gave preliminary approval to the $5.27 billion budget, which includes $738.3 million in discretionary spending directly controlled by the five supervisors.

County government faces new financial challenges even as the Inland economy improves. The Great Recession drained more than $200 million from county offers, forcing furloughs and the closure of nonessential buildings on Fridays.

Those days are over. But while property tax revenue is bouncing back, the county faces mounting, massive and mandatory new expenses, including pay raises guaranteed through labor contracts in exchange for unions agreeing to changes to the county pension system.

Adding to the budget pressure is public safety realignment, which shifted responsibility for certain low-level criminals from the state to counties, and Proposition 47, which swamped prosecutors with requests from criminals seeking to turn their felony convictions into misdemeanors, officials said.

Other challenges detailed in last month’s budget hearings include a higher social services caseload, the unfunded cost of keeping San Jacinto’s animal shelter open, shortfalls in the assessor’s office and Economic Development Agency and higher Cal Fire labor costs, Orr wrote in a memo to supervisors.

RATIO OF DEPUTIES

Ongoing revenue is not projected to keep pace with the new, long-term spending commitments, Orr wrote. Also, practically every new dollar coming in is ticketed for public safety, leaving little for non-public safety departments that sustained budget cuts during the recession.

To save more money, supervisors previously put the brakes on a plan to boost the ratio of deputies to people in unincorporated communities to 1.2 per 1,000. Instead, the county will hold at the present ratio of 1.04 per 1,000.

Orr wants a one-year hold on new positions for the District Attorney’s Office, new patrol deputies for the unincorporated area and new corrections officers. Hestrin should hire only as needed to keep up with attrition, and the same should go for Sniff when it comes to corrections officers and deputies patrolling unincorporated communities, Orr added.

Orr’s office also will work with the sheriff to implement phased staffing for the East County Detention Center, a $330 million expansion of the Indio jail set to open in early 2018.

To give departments certainty about their expenses, supervisors could OK the budget today. That normally happens in September.

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